Housing Vouchers and the Price of Rental Housing

Abstract. We estimate the effect of increasing the supply of housing vouchers on rents using a panel of units in the American Housing Survey. We do not find that an increase in vouchers affected the overall price of rental housing, but do estimate differences in effects based on an individual unit’s rent before the voucher expansion. Our results are consistent with voucher recipients renting more expensive units after receiving the subsidy. We also find the largest positive price increases for units in relatively supply inelastic cities, suggesting policy makers should take local attributes into account with targeting future housing subsidies

Does land use and landscape contribute to self-harm? A sustainability cities framework

Self-harm has become one of the leading causes of mortality in developed countries. The overall rate for suicide in Canada is 11.3 per 100,000 according to Statistics Canada in 2015. Between 2000 and 2007 the lowest rates of suicide in Canada were in Ontario, one of the most urbanized regions in Canada. However, the interaction between land use, landscape and self-harm has not been significantly studied for urban cores. It is thus of relevance to understand the impacts of land-use and landscape on suicidal behavior. This paper takes a spatial analytical approach to assess the occurrence of self-harm along one of the densest urban cores in the country: Toronto. Individual self-harm data was gathered by the National Ambulatory Care System (NACRS) and geocoded into census tract divisions. Toronto’s urban landscape is quantified at spatial level through the calculation of its land use at di erent levels: (i) land use type, (ii) sprawl metrics relating to (a) dispersion and (b) sprawl/mix incidence; (iii) fragmentation metrics of (a) urban fragmentation and (b) density and (iv) demographics of (a) income and (b) age. A stepwise regression is built to understand the most influential factors leading to self-harm from this selection generating an explanatory model.This research was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Strategic Team Grant in Applied Injury Research # TIR-103946 and the Ontario Neurotrauma Foundation grantinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Quantization of Signals and Metrics in the Decoding of 8-PSK TCM

The performance of rate 2/3 8-PSK Trellis Coded Modulation was investigated as a function of the numerical resolution of the metrics and signal vectors used in decoding by the Viterbi algorithm. It was found that a 16 state Ungerboeck code using 5 bit I and Q with 7 bit metrics achieved roughly the same performance as pragmatic TCM. The findings were applied to the digital logic design of a TCM decoder

On the Calculation of the Exponential Bound Parameter for Phase Quantized 8-PSK

The exponential bound parameter is numerically evaluated for 16-zone quantized 8-PSK for signal vectors bisecting decision regions and for signal vectors lying on decision boundaries. For decision regions of equal span, signal vectors lying on decision boundaries are superior, confirming the result of Parsons and Wilson (1990). Signal vectors bisecting decision regions are superior if span of decision regions not containing signal vectors is optimized. Using the partial derivative, it is shown that the optimal configuration depends on SNR. Furthermore, the optimal configuration is not necessarily one in which the decision boundaries are straight lines

Considerations for an Extended Framework for Interactive Epoch-Era Analysis

AbstractEpoch-Era Analysis (EEA) is a framework that supports narrative and computational scenario planning and analysis for both short run and long run futures. Currently EEA is being applied to frame problems faced by the DoD's Engineered Resilient Systems (ERS) efforts. Because of the large amount of data that must be analyzed when extending EEA to large-scale problems, such as those posed by DoD, a “big data” problem is introduced. This motivates the need for extensions to EEA methods that overcome the computational and human cognition issues that arise as a result. The research presented here describes exploratory development of Interactive Epoch-Era Analysis (IEEA) methods, including human interface and reasoning considerations for epoch and era characterizations, as well as single and multi- epoch and era analyses. Visualization techniques and methods for mitigating computational resource restrictions that facilitate improved decision-making are also presented

Turnover of sex chromosomes in the stickleback fishes (Gastrosteidae)

Journal ArticleDiverse sex-chromosome systems are found in vertebrates, particularly in teleost fishes, where different systems can be found in closely related species. Several mechanisms have been proposed for the rapid turnover of sex chromosomes, including the transposition of an existing sex-determination gene, the appearance of a new sex-determination gene on an autosome, and fusions between sex chromosomes and autosomes

On the Performance of Trellis Coded Modulation in a Concatenated Reed-Bolomon System

Concatenated systems combining the error correcting power of trellis codes and Reed-Solomon (RS) codes have been used to achieve error rates between 10-10 and 10-20 on satelite communications links [l]. The need for spectral efficiency has motivated consideration of of non-binary signalling with Ungerboeck [2,3] codes or the Pragmatic standard recently proposed by Viterbi [4], in place of quaternary signalling with rate 1/2 coding. In this paper we investigates the use of 8-PSK trellis-coded modulation (TCM) in a concatenated system using a (255,233) RS code. The use of the 8-PSK codes doubles the spectral efficiency with a performance cost of approximately 2 dB

Pragmatic Trellis Coded Modulation: A Simulation Using 24-Sector Quantized 8-PSK

Trellis Coded Modulation (TCM)[2,3,4], combines convolutional encoding with PSK or QAM signalling to provide spectrally efficient communication with forward error correction. Pragmatic TCM[1], uses the industry standard, 64-state, binary convolutional code. This paper presents a simulation of a pragmatic TCM system for 8-PSK. This system associates each sector of a quantized phase receiver[9] with a pair of weights to be used as soft decision inputs of the Viterbi decoder. This system approaches 3dB of coding gain at bit error rates of 10-5 and less